Episode 161: Aaron Crawfis on Dapr and Sustaining Cloud OSS

Guest Aaron Crawfis Panelists Richard Littauer | Justin Dorfman
Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk
about sustaining open source for the long haul. Richard and Justin
are excited to have as their guest today, Aaron Crawfis, who works
in the cloud space as a Senior Product Manager on the Azure Open
Source Incubations team, which develops and launches new open
source projects to advance the industry of cloud native computing
and applications. He’s done a lot of work on Dapr, which is a
distributed application runtime where he helped define, launch, and
market it to microservice developers currently working on
incubations, and more open source stuff across Azure and Microsoft.
Today, we’re going to find out more about Dapr, Azure, and working
in the cloud space. Aaron tells us about some great projects and
cool technologies coming out of the incubation space at Azure, and
he shares some awesome advice if you’re a project looking to get
into this space. Press download to hear more! [00:01:52] We start
with learning more about Dapr. [00:04:39] What’s the difference
between cloud native and working in the cloud? [00:07:35] Justin
mentions Dapr is mature and there are several companies that use it
and wonders what’s keeping Dapr in an incubation state rather than
graduating. Aaron also tells us that since the release of Dapr
v.1.10, they found that the majority of contributors are now
non-Microsoft developers. [00:09:31] We hear if Sarah Novotny and
Stormy Peters are involved in Dapr or if they’ve worked on any
projects with Aaron. [00:11:59] Aaron gives us his take on why so
many people in the cloud space feel the need to gravitate towards
large corporations. [00:16:33] We hear about a small business
startup Diagrid, and the Founders are building their entire
business model around Dapr. [00:18:13] Besides wearing a Dapr hat,
Aaron runs the Open Source Incubations at Azure, so he fills us in
on what that is, and their most recent incubation they launched
called, Project Copacetic. Justin wonders if this project has any
similarities to Chainguard’s images or a different approach to
tackling vulnerabilities. [00:24:08] Aaron shares how the Azure
Open Source Incubations team, as well as Microsoft is giving back
more than it takes. He gives a shout-out to the Hugo Project and
Doxy, which are his two go-to projects. [00:27:3] We hear about if
there’s been a discussion around governance for Dapr and how to
make the governance be independent from a single large funding
body. [00:29:40] If you’re a project looking to get into this
space, Aaron shares some advice. [00:30:57] Find out where you can
follow Aaron on the web. Quotes [00:16:26] “Developers and
customers will go where the best place to run that software is and
I don’t think it has to necessarily be a large corporation.”
[00:30:39] “You can make the best piece of software out there, but
if it’s undocumented or if you’re doing the getting started guide
and you a hit a bug on the first line, that’s where everyone will
drop off.” [00:30:48] “Biggest piece of advice, make sure that
things are well documented, the value props are there, and the
customers will flock right to you.” Spotlight [00:31:39] Justin’s
spotlight is a series he’s doing called, tncc-newsletter.com.
[00:32:02] Richard’s spotlight is Hugo. [00:32:20] Aaron’s
spotlight is Doxy. Links SustainOSS (https://sustainoss.org/)
SustainOSS Twitter
(https://twitter.com/SustainOSS?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
SustainOSS Discourse (https://discourse.sustainoss.org/)
podcast@sustainoss.org (mailto:podcast@sustainoss.org) SustainOSS
Hachyderm (https://mastodon.social/@sustainoss@hachyderm.io)
Richard Littauer Twitter
(https://twitter.com/richlitt?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
Justin Dorfman Twitter
(https://twitter.com/jdorfman?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
Aaron Crawfis Twitter (https://twitter.com/AaronCrawfis) Aaron
Crawfis LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/acrawfis) Dapr
(https://dapr.io/) Azure (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/)
Sustain Podcast-Episode 78: Stormy Peters: Sustaining FLOSS at
Microsoft’s Open Source Programs Office
(https://podcast.sustainoss.org/78) Sustain Podcast-Episode 93: Dan
Lorenc and OSS Supply Chain Security at Google
(https://podcast.sustainoss.org/93) Sustain Podcast-Episode 80:
Emma Irwin and the Foss Fund Program
(https://podcast.sustainoss.org/80) Diagrid
(https://www.diagrid.io/) Project Copacetic
(https://github.com/project-copacetic) Hugo (https://gohugo.io/)
Doxy (https://pypi.org/project/doxy/) The Non-Code Contributor
newsletter (https://tncc-newsletter.com/) Credits Produced by
Richard Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by Paul M. Bahr
at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by
DeAnn Bahr Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/)
Special Guest: Aaron Crawfis.